First Baptist Church of Brownfield
Brownfield, Terry County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Circuit riding preachers led early Brownfield settlers in religious services at a local schoolhouse. On April 1, 1906, several area residents formed a Baptist church. The Rev. M.D. Williams became the congregation's first pastor. The church built its first sanctuary in 1910 in the 300 block of West Hill Street. The Woman's Missionary Society raised funds for the lumber, and the men constructed the building. Facilities were added as needed until 1923, when the church began plans for a new house of worship at the present site. The mission-minded congregation and its facilities have continued to grow, sponsoring projects locally and worldwide. (2004)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Before it had a church of its own, Brownfield's early settlers gathered for services led by circuit-riding preachers in a local schoolhouse. In 1906 residents organized a Baptist congregation, and by 1910 they had a sanctuary on West Hill Street — its lumber paid for by the Woman's Missionary Society and the building raised by the men themselves. The growing congregation moved to a new site in the 1920s and expanded its mission work at home and abroad.
Why it matters
The congregation's founding shows how faith and volunteer labor — especially the fundraising of frontier churchwomen — anchored community life on the West Texas plains.
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Related people
- · M.D. Williams
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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In 1906, just three years after Brownfield's founding, eleven women banded together as the Maids and Matrons club. Turning to study and civic work, they opened the town's first library in 1907 and kept it running for decades, joining the Texas Federation of Women's Clubs in 1915. When a county library was organized in 1957, the club handed over its entire 3,000-volume collection to seed it.
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Brownfield began in 1903 as a promoter's gamble on the open plains of Terry County, laid out by developers W. G. Hardin and A. F. Small—famously using only a hundred feet of wire to measure a townsite out of raw pasture. To draw settlers they offered a free lot to every voter in the county, and a store, hotel, and school quickly followed. In 1904 the fledgling town narrowly beat neighboring Gomez for the county seat, securing its future.
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